Something New Under the Sun
Something New Under the Sun (5 minute edit)
Full film 25 minutes, in HD Video
“One of the most familiar of Dublin’s twentieth-century buildings is shortly to be demolished after a life of only 35 years. It is the old IMCO complex on Merrion Road, which is bowing out to make way for a new office and showroom development.”
Newspaper article circa 1975
Something New Under the Sun is a film concerning ideas around progress, novelty, our experience and perception of time and the contemporary, via an attempted portrait of the demolished IMCO building, and the work of its chief designer, Oliver P. Bernard. The film draws from significant research conducted in Dublin and London into social, industrial and personal histories. The anachronic, intertextual narrative, is interwoven with contemporary accounts, architectural journals, and newspaper articles from 1939, the year of the building's erection, to 1975 when the building was scheduled for demolition.
IMCO were a large firm of dry cleaners who ran a central cleaning and dying plant in Dublin, alongside approximately 50 branches taking delivery of items of clothing from all over the country. A weekly sponsored radio programme, featuring owner Louis Spiro and presented by Eamonn Andrews (of ‘This Is Your Life’ fame) made IMCO a household name. The second phase of their building, dating from 1939, incorporated a modernist concrete and glass tower, designed by Oliver P. Bernard. A noted architect, scenic and industrial designer, and a champion of modern engineering techniques and materials, Bernard is credited with being instrumental in developing conservative Victorian British taste in a modernist European direction. His 1936 autobiography details his early work and life, including his first-hand experience of the sinking of the liner Luisitania off the coast of Cork in 1915.
The IMCO building was, during its brief existence, a major landmark on Dublin's south coast, yet is all but forgotten today. Similarly, the industrial processes that the company carried out, once part of the fabric of everyday life, are entirely undocumented. The film is part of a series of works entitled On Seeing Only Totally New Things and coincides with the exhibition Colophon at Oonagh Young Gallery, Dublin.
Film credits
Filmed by Piers McGrail, assisted by Paul Quinn
Featuring Donna Marie O'Donovan
Edited by Gavin Murphy at Fire Station Artists' Studios
Audio by Robert Costello. Titles by Oran Day, Atelier David Smith
Filmed on the 8th and 9th of May 2011 at Elm Park/Merrion Road, and the Irish Architectural Archive, Dublin
Supported through funding from The Arts Council, and Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown County Council
More
DoCoMoMo Ireland and RHA present a lecture/talk: “Remembering Modern Architecture: destruction or restoration”, October 2012. DoCoMoMo is the international committee for the documentation and conservation of buildings, sites and neighbourhoods of the modern movement. Supported by the Irish Architecture Foundation.
Exhibited:
EVA International 2012 – After The Future
Curated by Annie Fletcher
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Royal Hibernian Academy
6 September–28 October 2012
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Film (edit)
Featured in
Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin
1st –7th December 2014, Paris
23–28 June, 2015, Berlin
Link
Aesthetica Art Prize 2015
York, UK
26 March–31 May 2015
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